This description is machine translated from the original on Filologica

Synonyms: Codex Vaticanus 3738, Codex (or Codex) Rios.

Location: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [Codex Vat. Lat. 3738].

Publication status: Published.

Typological Classification: Cosmological, cosmogonic, mythological, divinatory, ritual-calendrical, ethnographic, and historical.

Regional Classification: Basin of Mexico, with material from Puebla and Oaxaca.

Date: Approx. 1565.

Physical Description: European paper, 102 folios (17 blank), approx. 46.5 x 29.5 cm.

The first indisputable note of Codex Vaticanus A (Indorum cultus, idolatria et mores) appears in the 1596-1600 Rainaldi inventory of the Vatican Collection, although there are ambiguous references to Mexican manuscripts in the Vatican Library that could also refer to it (Mercati, 1589; José de Acosta, 1590). In a supplement to the 1615 and 1625 editions of Cartari's Imagini delli dei de gli antichi, Pignoria added figures copied from the codex that also appear in two sketchbooks by Filippo de Winghe (d. 1592). According to Pignoria, these copies originally came from Cardinal Amulio, prefect of the Vatican Library from 1565 to 1566 (he died in 1570).

In his Antiquities of Mexico, Kingsborough (1830-1848) produces the first edition of the manuscript, although, unfortunately he separates the lithographic images from the texts and provides an erratic translation in three separate volumes. The Duke of Loubat's edition (entitled II manuscrito messicano vaticano 3738 detto il Codice Rios) reorganized the incorrectly bound folios and included improved color lithographs with minor flaws. Ehrle (1990) provides an Italian transcription of the texts and an extensive historical and bibliographical commentary. Coroña Nuñez's edition (1964), entitled Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3738, includes reduced-size color photographs of the original manuscript, maintains Ehrle's foliation, and adds a Spanish translation and commentary with some errors. The ADEVA edition (1979), entitled Codex Vaticanus 3738, provides a superior photographic reproduction of the manuscript reduced to a scale of 7/10, but with folios that revert to the scrambled order of the original manuscript. It is preceded only by a one-page introduction in German, English and Spanish, and has no transcription or commentary. The edition by Anders, Jansen & Reyes García (1996) reproduces the plates of the ADEVA edition, changes the title of the manuscript (Religión, Costumbres, e Historia de los Antiguos Mexicanos: Libro explicativo del llamado Códice Vaticano A), renumbers several pages, and provides a transcription in Italian, a Spanish translation, and a detailed scholarly commentary.

In the 18th century the exiled Mexican Jesuit Fábrega (1899:13-14) described the manuscript, commented on its disordered state which he attributed to the Dominican Pedro de los Ríos, and used it to study two unannotated pre-Hispanic manuscripts, the Vaticanus B and the Borgia. Humboldt (1810:87-89, 202-211) was the first to recognize the relationship between Codex Telleriano-Remensis in the Imperial Library of Paris and Codex Vaticanus A in the Vatican Library. He reproduced and discussed all 9 clothed figures (lam. 14) and the four suns of the “Aztec Mythology” (lam. 26), noting, as did Fabrega, that they differed from the original Mexican manuscripts in the Vatican Collection. Paso y Troncoso (1898b:60-61, 340-368) undertook a detailed comparative examination of a large portion of the manuscript and identified the cosmogonic section as a transcribed Toltec legend. Quiñones Keber (1955b) discussed how the Vatican manuscript reflected sixteenth-century information gathering practices. Because of their rarity and importance, the cosmographic, cosmogonic, and mythological segments of the manuscript have attracted the attention of a number of scholars, including Mendoza (1882, 1886, 1877); Chavero (1877a; 1903: 5-14; s. f.:77-90); Paso y Troncoso (18989); Imbelloni (1943); León-Portilla (1963); Graulich (1983a, 1983b, 1997); Nagao (1985); Quiñones Keber (1997); López Austin (1997; 1998:I:54-58). Particularly, the material on Quetzalcoatl in the mythological section and in the trecenas has been the subject of commentary by Beauvois (1886); Lafaye (1974:165-168); D. Carrasco (1982); Quiñones Keber (1984, 1987) and Nicholson (2001:XXVI-XI, 60-73). The equally rare twenty symbols accompanying the conquest scenes (ff. 89r-v), which are missing in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, were reproduced and discussed by Seler (1899a) and Kubler & Gibson (1951). See Table X for a concordance between the two manuscripts and Rios Pair for studies dealing with both manuscripts.

Like Codex Telleriano-Remensis, its partial cognate, Codex Vaticanus A is a colonial compilation of various types of indigenous manuscripts, with major sections composed of smaller subsections and even individual folios. One tlacuilo copied the calendrical rituals (veintenass) and the divinatory part (tonalamatl) of Codex Telleriano-Remensis, while others either roughly painted the historical section of this manuscript or copied other sections not in this source (cosmology, cosmogony, mythology, clothing, calendrical signs, sacrificial rituals) to produce an extensive compendium of indigenous life. Some information found in the codex (folios 4v, 23r) indicates that a Dominican friar named Pedro de los Ríos “compiled” its images. Pedro de los Ríos is identified as the final and most ubiquitous annotator of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Ríos and his Dominican colleagues finished annotating the Codex Tellerian-Remensis in Puebla around 1563, and probably began, shortly thereafter, to work on copying the images and adding others to create a much longer and grander manuscript. Two scribes added extensive comments in Italian, in a rather strange vocabulary, to the new manuscript, indicating that this ambitious production was intended for an Italian reader. For the cognate sections the commentaries are compiled, revised and augmented translations of the scattered Spanish annotations of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. However, they are much more digressive and are otherwise Christianized and intoned with biblical allusions. The need to edit and translate the Codex Telleriano-Remensis annotations suggests that an intermediate draft of the text was made. The rare Italian text and the early appearance of the manuscript in the Vatican Library indicate that it was intended for an Italian dignitary, possibly the Dominican Pope Paul VI, who was pontiff from 1566 to 1572.

The cosmological, cosmogonic and mythological sections with which the manuscript opens are unique among colonial manuscripts from Central Mexico. The first of these sections shows the celestial, terrestrial and underworld levels of the universe (ff. 1v-3v); the second, the four suns prior to the present one or the cosmic eras (ff. 4v-7r); and the third, the story of Quetzalcoatl and Xipe Totec in Tollan (ff. 7v-10v). This is followed by the 260-day divinatory book copied from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (ff. 11r-33r), which also includes images of the days, gods, and mystical influences of the 20 thirteen-day periods called trecenas. The next calendrical-ritual section includes a table of a 52-year calendrical cycle from 1558 to 1619 (actually 1609; 34v-36r); a section on the veintena, copied from the same codex, which includes depictions of the deities of the 18 annual ceremonies of the veintenas (ff. 42v-51r); a graphic table of the 20 day signs related to various parts of the male body (f. 54r); and sacrificial ceremonies (ff. 54v-57r). Next is an ethnographic section with figures of five warriors, a ruler, a man and an elite woman, dressed in their traditional costumes (ff. 57v-61r), then a folio showing the 3 eras of man (f. 61v). The last section is very sparsely annotated but is a more complete pictographic historical annals than those in Codex Telleriano-Remensis and is composed of a migration account, which here begins in 1194 (7 caves and 3 years added; ff. 66v-73r); a dynastic history from 1366 to 1518 (ff. 73v-86v), and a segment on the conquest and colony from 1519 to 1549 (ff. 87r-94r). It concludes with painted annual signs without images or annotations through 1566 (ff. 95r-96v) although it omits the list of historical events from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. See Table X for a concordance between the two manuscripts and Rios Pair for studies on both manuscripts.

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